Will Lisa Cook Make the Fed?

Some say she brings a fresh perspective; others believe she’s too focused on race

- By Craig Torres, Photography by Brittany Greeson/ The New York Times/ Redux

With a Ph.D. in economics and experience working for the U.S. Treasury Department and the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Lisa Cook through one lens looks like a standard nominee to the Federal Reserve Board.

But Cook is not a typical nominee. One of her key pieces of research was on an unusual topic—the role of violence in holding back Black contributions to American innovation—and her career is steeped in first-hand experience in confronting financial and economic breakdowns in emerging markets. Advising the central bank of Rwanda after the East African nation’s devastating 1994 civil war, Cook realized that one source of the crisis was the scarcity of land and the failure of combatants to imagine that it could be made more productive.

That’s the kind of insight that’s marked Cook’s career and attracted Democrats to her nomination to become the first Black woman on the Fed board in its 108-year history. But lacking an extensive research record on monetary theory, she’s facing questions from the economic establishment and some members of Congress. They fear the Fed will wait too long to lean against the inflation that’s threatening to undermine the recovery, which could shape calculations about who will control Congress and the White House after November.